The Coup is Proceeding Quite Well

“America when will we end the human war?/Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.” Allen Ginsberg

Of course the Democrats are dragging their feet on launching impeachment proceedings against Donald J. Trump. Although, as Ralph Nadar wrote recently, Trump is probably the most impeachable president in American history, the Democrats, as always, play it cautious, like an old woman with poor eyesight who is afraid to cross a busy street. Trump is a walking, talking, breathing, farting, belching epitome of a corrupt president, the sort of debased, deluded, and debauched man our white founding fathers worried about and why they wrote into the Constitution a method for his removal. But the spineless Dems can’t pull the trigger. No, they first have to disassemble their weapon, oil the barrel, check the magazine, reassemble, fire some practice rounds, collect the shell casings, hold an inquest.

Only Democrats in the House can defend the principle that no one is above the law. But don’t tell Nancy Pelosi, she won’t listen, too busy is she with electoral considerations. What, Pelosi asks her Magic 8 Ball, might an impeachment proceeding do to the Democrats chances of defeating Trump in 2020? If it means shutting out the left-leaning wing of the Party (the wing whose ideas might actually energize voters) and nominating a neoliberal relic like Joe Biden to carry their standard into the fray, the Democrats will do it, just as they did in 2016. Biden, like Hillary Clinton, is tone-deaf and out of touch, a man who should be ushered off the stage and carted far, far away, never to be seen or heard from again.   

I’m reading Truthteller by Stephen Davis, a journalist, producer, and investigative reporter who notes that when corporations and governments want to deep six the truth they inevitably dip into the same tool bag. If the message isn’t to their liking, they attack the messenger. If that doesn’t make the story go away, they delay, delay, delay until the public loses interest and chases after a newer shiny object. If the story somehow remains afloat, they hatch conspiracy theories, tapping any convenient bogeyman, from Vladimir Putin, to Iran, to the left-leaning media to eco-terrorists. And finally, they can always use their money and media power to create an alternate reality, one in which facts are irrelevant.

Make-believe reality includes Trump’s “booming economy,” which is far less his than it is Barack Obama’s. Yes, people at or near the top rung of the economic ladder are doing fine, as they have been for years, but the true measure of the economy is, or should be, two-fold: how are folks at or below the middle -- the people for whom healthcare, housing, education, and retirement are steep hills to scale -- doing, and how much is our current economic arrangement contributing to catastrophic climate change? 

Trump, and, to be frank, Wall Street friendly Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden, could give a rat’s ass about either working people or the climate, having jettisoned the former and dragged their heels on the latter for decades. To hear Trump crow, you’d think every American is rolling around on a bed of crisp $100 bills.  

Trump attacks people and institutions who refuse to bow to him, sues at the drop of a dime, urges high officials to refuse to cooperate with Congress, and spins conspiratorial tales. He claims a coup is being staged against him when the exact opposite is the case. Trump and his henchmen in the GOP are running a coup against our Constitution; Mitch McConnell and William Barr are Trump’s point men. At this moment, the coup is proceeding quite well.

What’s an average citizen to do? Write more letters to his or her congressperson and senators? As if that has any value. “I appreciate hearing your views on this important issue,” is the usual response, and then the electeds do whatever they want. Theoretically, we should be able to take feckless legislators out at the ballot box, but that game is rigged in most states and districts, and our choice is usually a lesser evil, someone odious, just not as odious as Donald J. Trump or Marco Rubio or Charles Schumer or Lindsey Graham or Steve King or Devin Nunes.